I could be the 3rd (or is it 4th) person to say "this should not be plotted on a log scale", but instead, I think I'll comment on how they utterly fail at algebra and didn't know that a log scale is just the same as plotting log(x) instead of x. Oh, sure, you need to renumber the scale then... big deal! I once made a graph in Excel that had a linear scale between 0 and 1 and a log2 scale from 1 upward. Yes it required some fancy formulas and yes it required adding an extra series to display the numbers on the axis labels but it really wasn't a difficult little project.

Also, your link is broken and the image isn't hotlinking (I can see it if I go to the URL directly) and wtf is class="jcaelccauhbyabsulkbf" there for?.

And "by selected age of mother" implies that out of 1000 women that age, this many women have given birth. Plus, I think that post was sarcastic, though I didn't really get the sarcasm.

That question was not sarcastic. As stated, the rate does not make any sense. BenL's answer can't be correct, because the numbers do no add to 1000 (but yep, he was being sarcastic). It can not be the total rate of women with children, because it tops at around 120/1000

And "by selected age of mother" implies that out of 1000 women that age, this many women have given birth. Plus, I think that post was sarcastic, though I didn't really get the sarcasm.

That question was not sarcastic. As stated, the rate does not make any sense. BenL's answer can't be correct, because the numbers do no add to 1000 (but yep, he was being sarcastic). It can not be the total rate of women with children, because it tops at around 120/1000

Just how hard is it? A birth rate of 120 for one year means in that year, there were 120 births for every 1,000 women in that age group. Some of them could have even given birth twice in the year; how else would your statistic account for this, except by using total number of births per total number of women?

Please note the label on the Y axis. It's "Rate per 1000 women" i.e., for every 1000 women of [some age] there were [some number] of births. Not all that hard to figure out. Why you would want a logarithmic scale for that is another story that remains unexplained.

I find it mildly interesting that the birth rates for women under 30 have been steadily declining for 20+ years, while for women over 30 and even over 40 it has been steadily increasing.

Please note the label on the Y axis. It's "Rate per 1000 women" i.e., for every 1000 women of [some age] there were [some number] of births. Not all that hard to figure out. Why you would want a logarithmic scale for that is another story that remains unexplained.

I find it mildly interesting that the birth rates for women under 30 have been steadily declining for 20+ years, while for women over 30 and even over 40 it has been steadily increasing.

Doesn't that simply imply that the exact same women just keep having babies?

Doesn't that simply imply that the exact same women just keep having babies?

No. More women are deferring having children until later in life. This is mistake, because once a woman is past her mid-20s the rate of problem pregnancies goes up. Modern women also have far fewer children, which obviously impacts the rate.

Doesn't that simply imply that the exact same women just keep having babies?

No more women are deferring having children until later in life. This is my mistake, because once, a woman past her mid-20s caused the rate of problem pregnancies to go up. Modern women also have far fewer children, which obviously impacts the rate.

I was looking at it as simply "twenty years ago, women in their teens and early twenties kept farting out humans. Now, twenty years later, women in their thirties and forties are farting out babies." I know it's not what the graph shows, but it's amusing to imagine it as "one group of women keeps having children, and has aged twenty years in twenty years!"

Shhhh, we're not telling him about that yet. As far as he knows, babies happen when a mommy eats a seed and it grows in her stomach.

Tearing of the vaginal walls during labor is quite common, actually, including the part separating it from the anus. This only rarely manifests as babies being literally farted out, but often shows up later as... vaginal fecal discharge.

Shhhh, we're not telling him about that yet. As far as he knows, babies happen when a mommy eats a seed and it grows in her stomach.

Tearing of the vaginal walls during labor is quite common, actually, including the part separating it from the anus. This only rarely manifests as babies being literally farted out, but often shows up later as... vaginal fecal discharge.

Not so oddly named. A fistula is an abnormal opening or connection between two organs or structures that shouldn't be connected. (You may think this is, in itself, an odd name, but it is simply the Latin word for "pipe". If it's odd, blame the Romans.) "Rectovaginal" simply describes which two structures are connected.

For some reason, I feel compelled to point out that the word "fistula" is completely unrelated to a certain activity with a similar name that could, potentially, cause a rectovaginal fistula.

So wait, what kind of scale is this plotted on? And what kind of software limitation prevented them from generating an image of a chart with a specific scale?

It's quite clear that the graph will be plotted on a log scale in the published version but is not in this version. That's what the note in red says. Did they really need to add a second note in red after the black note saying, "The previous NOTES will be in the published version so you can review them. If they were going to be different we would have said so. Again, repeating the red node you just read, in this version, the graph is not in a log scale, in the published version it will be. That's why the black note says it's on a log scale -- that note will be in the published version as no red note says it won't be.